


The Great Escape

by likeadeuce



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen, Post-Series, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 22:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3826846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They forgot the soy milk</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Great Escape

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



> AU from the series finale, "Felina." Mega-spoilers for canon.

1.

They forgot the soy milk; that was what saved her.

As soon as the chamomile tea hit Lydia's tongue, she knew the waitress had ignored her instructions and used dairy. Back home, she would have made a fuss, but she didn't want to be memorable to the diner staff, especially not today, so she swallowed the first mouthful, then put the mug aside. 

She swallowed instead of spitting; that almost killed her.

Back at the hotel, she used a toothbrush and tried to make herself vomit. She'd never been bulimic, but the person she dated her junior year at Wellesley basically was, and all the girls who cared about their figures shared a few tricks. Lydia had never been good at it, though, and after a few tries she gave up. It had only been a little bit of milk, and until she heard from Todd that everything was done, an upset tummy would be the least of her worries. 

Still, she blamed the waitress when she started to feel ill, then when it felt more like flu, she blamed the little germ vectors in Kiira's preschool. But when she called home, Dolores assured her that the little senorita was her usual cheerful self, and five minutes of the child's bubbly, distracted chatter proved it. Lydia let the stream of 'Mommy, mommy guess what?' wash over her, relieved that her daughter was safe, but a kernel of unjust annoyance rubbed at her, that she hadn't figured out what was wrong. All that time on planes, rubbed against strangers on tubes full of germs; with the international flights coming in to Houston, she could have been exposed to literally anything. Today of all days.

Then she had to get off the phone to vomit. No toothbrush required, this time.

She called Todd, distressed, and Walter White gave her the answer she was looking for. "That's the ricin. I put it in that Stevia crap. . ."

Lydia dropped the phone, or he did. 

Idiot, was her first thought. If he wanted her to die, he shouldn't have told her what the poison was. But when she googled it with shaky hands – stumbling onto the elevator, after calling the concierge for a cab– she understood why. Ricin had no antidote, it said. The best you could do was treat the symptoms it said. Inducing vomiting wouldn't have helped, and might make it worse. 

At least she knew.

"Hospital," she choked out, and when the cabbie looked alarmed, she said, "I'm not contagious. It's. . .a feminine complaint."

Lydia hadn't believed in God since she was a child, but there must have been some residue of faith, because as she curled up in the back of the cab, knees pulled to her chest, she thought of praying. What stopped her was the suspicion that God would not be on her side here. Better to slip in under his radar, not call attention to the bad woman who did such terrible things, as she tried to slip away from the consequences.

She could have called Kiira again. Mommy loves you so much, little bug, don't listen to what anyone says, if I don't come home. . .

Instead, Lydia looked up her life insurance information, then her bank accounts, and her stock portfolio, piece by piece. Ever since the night Ehrmentraut had so incomprehensibly spared her, she had gone over these calculations. The math was reassuring; the numbers were good. Kiira would be provided for. She'd live with Lydia's sister, grow up with her cousins, remember little of the mother whose strange whim had led to her birth. 

But this was all silly. Walter was confident she had been dealt with, but he thought she'd drunk the whole cup.

God looked out for fools and incompetent waitstaff. Maybe she'd send an anonymous thank you.

This was her last thought before she passed out, in the lobby of the emergency room.

2.

When Lydia climbs back to consciousness, her sister Kitty is there.

"They think it was some strange flu. They called in the CDC and everything."

"What was it?" Lydia asks, although she remember, as soon as she's conscious. She has to remember to be a baffled as the doctors, who had been too busy getting caught up in swine flu panic to run a rule-out toxicology screening, because why would a nice lady show up in an Albuquerque ER with ricin in her system? Then "How long?" Four days. "Did I say anything in my sleep?" At which point Kitty laughs and hugs her, and if she confessed to any horrible crimes in her delirium, no one took her seriously. "Can I see the newspaper?" she tries, but Kitty insists no one needs to read about all those horrible things. Lydia just catches a glimpse of a banner headline with "Massacre," as Kitty folds it up and hides it under a vase of hypo-allergenic begonias.

Lydia has to pretend to be sleeping, then wait for Kitty to go off and confer with the nurse, before, she retrieves the paper, and reads what she can around the damp circle where the flowers have stood. Lots of dead. Todd's name is there; so is Walter Fucking White's. She scans the rest of the list, some she knows, some she doesn't because Todd always threw around what sounded like gang names, and she never really wanted to know. 

She doesn't see Pinkman, but for all she knows, he's been dead a long time.

Lydia keeps going through it, running everything she knew about the whole system in her head. She spends a week at Kitty's, in Seattle, and Kiira flies up to stay with her. The whole time, she keeps working it out, like a math problem. Who's still out there? Who might come after her?

Lydia always worries. Lydia never feels safe, will never feel safe for her entire life, but she can't help running into the obvious conclusion. Walter White already did the math for her. He put the poison in her tea, because she was the last loose end.

No one's coming after her.

She's gotten away with it.


End file.
